Cat and Mouse (Alex Cross)

A brand new book from the Sunday Times and internationally bestselling author of The Silk Roads’Masterly mapping out of a new world order’ – Evening Standard Revised and updated editionThe New Silk Roads takes a fresh look at the relationships being formed along the length and breadth of the ancient trade routes today. The world is changing dramatically and in an age of Brexit and Trump, the themes of isolation and fragmentation permeating the western world stand in sharp contrast to events along the Silk Roads, where ties are being strengthened and mutual cooperation established.This prescient contemporary history provides a timely reminder that we live in a world that is profoundly interconnected. Following the Silk Roads eastwards from Europe through to China, by way of Russia and the Middle East, Peter Frankopan assesses the global reverberations of continual shifts in the centre of power – all too often absent from headlines in the west. The New Silk Roads asks us to re-examine who we are and where we stand in the world, illuminating the themes on which all our lives and livelihoods depend. The Silk Roads, a major reassessment of world history, has sold over 1 million copies worldwide.

Drawing on his knowledge and long practice of Buddhism, the author reflects on four lines representing fundamental principles of the Zen or Ch’an school of Buddhism: “A special transmission outside the scriptures”, “No dependence on words and letters”, “Direct pointing to the mind”, and “Seeing into one’s own nature and realizing Buddhahood”. He sets out to communicate the essence of each, and to indicate how its meaning can be applied to Western conditions.

Awais Reza is a shopkeeper in Lahore’s Anarkali Bazaar,the largest open market in South Asia,whose labyrinthine streets teem with shoppers, rickshaws, and cacophonous music.But Anarkali’s exuberant hubbub cannot conceal the fact that Pakistan is a country at the edge of a precipice. In recent years, the easy sociability that had once made up this vibrant community has been replaced with doubt and fear. Old-timers like Awais, who inherited his shop from his father and hopes one day to pass it on to his son, are being shouldered aside by easy money, discount stores, heroin peddlers, and the tyranny of fundamentalists.Every night before Awais goes to bed, he plugs in his cell phone and hopes. He hopes that the city will not be plunged into a blackout, that the night will remain calm, that the following morning will bring affluent and happy customers to his shop and, most of all, that his three sons will safely return home. Each of the boys, though, has a very different vision of their, and Pakistan’s, future.The Bargain from the Bazaar,the product of eight years of field research,is an intimate window onto ordinary middle-class lives caught in the maelstrom of a nation falling to pieces. It’s an absolutely compelling portrait of a family at risk,from a violently changing world on the outside and a growing terror from within.

‘The most comprehensive narrative of intelligence compiled … unrivalled’ Max Hastings, Sunday Times’Captivating, insightful and masterly’ Edward Lucas, The TimesThe history of espionage is far older than any of today’s intelligence agencies, yet the long history of intelligence operations has been largely forgotten. The first mention of espionage in world literature is in the Book of Exodus.’God sent out spies into the land of Canaan’. From there, Christopher Andrew traces the shift in the ancient world from divination to what we would recognize as attempts to gather real intelligence in the conduct of military operations, and considers how far ahead of the West – at that time – China and India were. He charts the development of intelligence and security operations and capacity through, amongst others, Renaissance Venice, Elizabethan England, Revolutionary America, Napoleonic France, right up to sophisticated modern activities of which he is the world’s best-informed interpreter. What difference have security and intelligence operations made to course of history? Why have they so often forgotten by later practitioners? This fascinating book provides the answers.